Anarchocyclist

i just read an article about the complicity of medical professionals in torture in iraq, and it suddenly clicked with some other stuff i’ve been reading lately. In the article, the author says “How does one find doctors who will abandon their oath and comply with such flagrant criminal activity? Does the Pentagon have a recruiting program for “aspiring Mengeles”?” I think that he’d benefit from some analysis about the role and socialization of professionals in our society.

lately, i’ve been listening to an online radio show called Unwelcome Guests where they’ve done some readings of a book called Disciplined Minds, by Jeff Schmidt. The book is written by a physicist, and is about the social functions of professionals, and the hidden goals of the training they receive. (listen to episodes 176-179 of Unwelcome Guests, and you’ll be able to hear the readings of the first few chapters of disciplined minds)

The big connection here, for me, is that the iraq article illustrates part of Schmidt’s point that professionals are trained to accept the ideology of their superiors. Acting in a ‘professional’ manner means that they’ll follow along with the boss’ view and ‘just do their job’. The book explains it much better than these few sentences can convey, and i strongly recommend listening to part of those readings.

The book really hits home for me, being a trained professional. It talks about how people typically complain that their training is just “hoops to jump through” and doesn’t have much that’s actually relevant to the real-world work they’ll be doing…and Schmidt mentions that people learn more on-the-job about the actual work, but that the training isn’t really about that. The training is about taking direction…about having your interest focussed on things that are determined by the higher-ups.

anyway, like i said, he argues it much better than i can in two paragraphs. my copy of the book is arriving soon, and i’ll happily lend it out after i’ve read it in full. For now, i suggest listening to the Unwelcome Guests shows…and even the ones that don’t have readings from this book are still excellent radio shows.

Ride hard, ride free

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2004 at 09:36 am and is filed under Front Page, Politics, stuff to read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.